Dollar-Cost Averaging: How To Build Wealth Over Time

In this example, the investor takes advantage of lower prices when they’re available by dollar-cost averaging, even if that means paying higher costs later. If the stock had moved even lower, instead of higher, dollar-cost averaging would have allowed an even larger profit. Buying the dips is tremendously important to securing stronger long-term returns. With dollar-cost averaging, you actually have an overall gain at $40 per share of ABCD stock, below where you first started buying the stock. Because you own more shares than in a lump-sum purchase, your investment grows more quickly as the stock’s price goes up, with your total profit at an $80 sale price more than doubled.

A third of the time, dollar cost averaging outperformed lump sum investing. Because it’s impossible to predict future market drops, dollar cost averaging offers solid returns while reducing the risk you end up in the 33.33% of cases where lump sum investing falters. According to research by Charles Schwab, investors who tried to time the market saw drastically less gains than those who regularly invested with dollar cost averaging.

A key advantage of using a strategy like dollar-cost averaging is that it can help mitigate the effects of investor psychology, as it relates to trying to time the market. With a dollar-cost averaging approach, you may avoid making a counter-productive decision due to emotions like fear or greed (like buying more when prices are going up or panic selling when prices are going down). Moreover, dollar-cost averaging might be appropriate if you think there is a possibility that your investment opportunity may decline over the short term (to some extent), but you believe it will rise over the longer term. Dollar cost averaging is a strategy to manage price risk when you’re buying stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or mutual funds. Instead of purchasing shares at a single price point, with dollar cost averaging you buy in smaller amounts at regular intervals, regardless of price. Dollar-cost averaging is a simple way to help reduce your risk and increase your returns, and it takes advantage of a volatile stock market.

There are other solid advantages to having multiple brokerage accounts, too, and you can usually get a lot of value by having multiple accounts. Dollar-cost averaging makes a volatile market work to your benefit. By adding money regularly, you’re going to buy at times when the market is lower, therefore lowering your average purchase price and actually acquiring more shares. When the market moves higher, your regular contribution will buy fewer shares, but you’ll already have shares from prior purchases, so you’ll still gain and won’t completely miss out. With regard to actually using the strategy, how often you use it may depend on your investment horizon, outlook on the market, and experience with investing. If your outlook is for a market in flux that will eventually rise, then you might try it.

When it comes to diversified investing, there are no better choices for investors than ETFs or funds as they provide exposure to multiple assets and industries which also reduces the risk of a single stock or asset falling. Then you can instruct your brokerage to set up a plan to buy automatically project management salary at regular intervals. Even if your brokerage account doesn’t offer an automatic trading plan, you can set up your own purchases on a fixed schedule — say, the first Monday of the month. Invest the same amount of money in the same stock or mutual fund at regular intervals, say monthly.

1. Additionally, many dividend reinvestment plans allow investors to dollar-cost average by making purchases regularly.
2. If you have a workplace retirement plan, like a 401(k), you’re probably already using dollar cost averaging by default for at least some of your investing.
3. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range, can also impact how and where products appear on this site.
4. Check out the table below to see how this strategy might play out using varying stock prices.

Suppose you have $5,000 to invest and have identified a stock you would like to purchase. However, you are unsure when and at what price you would like to buy the stock. Using a dollar-cost averaging approach, you might decide to invest $1,000 a month for 5 consecutive months. And if your stock or fund pays dividends, it can be a good time to set up automatic dividend reinvestment with your broker.

Over time, the average cost per share you spend should compare quite favorably with the price you would have paid if you had tried to time it. You may not have a large amount of money saved up—and waiting may cause you to miss out on potential gains. It can be stressful to invest a lot of money at once, and it may be easier psychologically for you to invest portions of a large sum over time.

How Does Dollar Cost Averaging Work?

Now let’s compare it with others to see how dollar-cost averaging works. The example is hypothetical and provided for illustrative purposes only. You should also be aware of any trading what is the cheapest energy tariff for bitcoin mining fees you might incur in your trading account making multiple transactions. Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader.

Who Should Use Dollar Cost Averaging?

While the financial markets are in a constant state of flux, over long periods of time, most stocks tend to move in the same general direction, swept along by larger currents in the economy. If the investor had spent the entire $5,000 at once at any time during this period, the total profit might be higher or lower. But by staggering the purchases, the risk of the investment has been greatly reduced.

So, can I Dollar-Cost Average anything and always make money?

This way, you don’t have to wait until you have a larger amount saved up to benefit from market growth. Dollar cost averaging works because over the long term, asset prices tend to rise. Instead, they run to short-term highs and lows that may not follow any predictable pattern. Also, if you are implementing a dollar-cost averaging approach, those funds in waiting are typically held in cash or cash equivalents that earn very low rates of return. By using dollar-cost averaging, though, he was able to take advantage of several price drops despite the fact that the share price increased to over $11.

Dollar cost averaging’s regular investments also ensure you invest even when the market is down. For some people, maintaining investments during market dips can be intimidating. However, if you stop investing or withdraw your existing investments in down markets, you risk missing out on future growth.

Whether it’s up or down, you’re putting the same amount of money into it. In a perfect world, the investor would have placed all the money in Month 3 and walked away with 250 shares. However, there was no way of knowing ahead of time that this was the best time to buy, which is why dollar cost averaging is so valuable. By investing frequently and regularly over a long period of time, you’re less likely to miss out on those buying opportunities. Also, keep in mind that lump sum investing only beat dollar cost averaging most of the time.

Scenario 3: In a flattish market

A nice strategy used by many small investors is to use the money they planned to spend on entertainment on a daily basis on purchasing assets, but for this to work, a no commission broker is definitely a must have. Over the course of 6 Months, our investor accumulated cryptocurrency exchange comparison 17.9 units of a particular asset by investing $300 monthly, he never cared about the current market prices. It’s true, by dollar-cost averaging, you may forgo gains that you otherwise would have earned if you had invested in a lump-sum purchase and the stock rises.

You might consider using the dollar-cost averaging strategy to invest in an exchange-traded fund or no-load mutual fund. It’s important to note that dollar-cost averaging works well as a method of buying an investment over a specific period of time when the price fluctuates up and down. If the price rises continuously, those using dollar-cost averaging end up buying fewer shares. If it declines continuously, they may continue buying when they should be on the sidelines.

He ended up with more shares (47.71) at a lower average price ($10.48). Using this strategy to buy an individual stock without researching a company’s details could prove detrimental, as well. That’s because an investor might continue to buy more stock when they otherwise would stop buying or exit the position. Bear in mind that the repeated investing called for by dollar-cost averaging may result in higher transaction costs compared to investing a lump sum of money once. Stock markets are volatile and can fluctuate significantly in response to company, industry, political, regulatory, market, or economic developments.

Having said this, it doesn’t mean that you can’t try to Dollar-Cost Average risky assets or individual stocks. With a little legwork up front, you can make dollar-cost averaging as easy as investing in an IRA. Setting up a plan with most brokerages isn’t hard, though you’ll have to select which stock — or ideally, which well-diversified exchange-traded fund — you’ll purchase. This scenario looks equivalent to the lump-sum purchase, but it really isn’t, because you’ve eliminated the risk of mistiming the market at minimal cost. Markets and stocks can often move sideways — up and down, but ending where they began — for long periods. However, you’ll never be able to consistently predict where the market is heading.